


And in the Morning I’ll Make Cereal

by dead_on_the_inside



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Anyways, Basically, Blood, Blood and Injury, Dave angst, Dead Nepeta Leijon, Everything Hurts, Fighting, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gore, Injury, Karkat Angst, Karkat Swearing, Mild Gore, Multi, POV Dave Strider, POV Karkat Vantas, POV Second Person, War, almost/no john pov, ao3 deleted everything i tagged for the third time, but - Freeform, but hey, but yeah, but you might tho, fuck it, god i dont wanna have to tag that, god im sorry for this train wreck, have fun, honestly i really have no clue what to tag anymore, humans have wings and trolls are weird goblin/fairy things, i cant write him, i did while writing it, i have no idea whats going on/whats going to happen anywhere past the second chapter, i hope you cry /j, i live of off interaction, im debating writing my life story in these tags, so if anyone has ideas feel dree to comment, thats a thing, the au is really confusing, the second chapter gets even darker than the first, the second chapter got way more poetic near the end than it was supposed to, these arent even tags they're just random shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:48:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28826226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dead_on_the_inside/pseuds/dead_on_the_inside
Summary: aura:noun1.the distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place.2.(in spiritualism and some forms of alternative medicine) a supposed emanation surrounding the body of a living creature and regarded as an essential part of the individual.any invisible emanation, especially an odour.
Relationships: Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, John Egbert/Dave Strider, John Egbert/Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, John Egbert/Karkat Vantas, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam
Comments: 12
Kudos: 11





	1. I want brimstone in my garden

**Author's Note:**

> title of book from I'll make Cereal by Cavetown  
> title of chapter from Little Pistol by Mother Mother  
> yes i am aware of how gay those sentences make me sound, and yes, i am gender-non-conforming  
> the amount of angst in this is immense  
> !!! TW: PANIC ATTACKS, DEREALISATION, DEPERSONALISATION, CHILD ABUSE, LACK OF FOOD, DISCRIMINATION !!!  
> if i missed any please let me know i tried to get the common ones that i could but PLEASE let me know if i missed any  
> stay safe :)

You’re cold. You’re...hungry? Yeah. But it’s so numb. It’s too numb. The cold is numbing it, you think. Maybe. Or maybe, you’ve just been hungry for so long that you can’t even feel it anymore. You don’t know. 

You are Dave Strider, and you are four years old, standing on the edge of the balcony that comes out of the small nest you share with your Bro. And you are starving. You barely have the energy to pull yourself up from where you were lying down, tiny wings fluttering behind you (blood is dripping off of your...everywhere? You can’t really tell, but there’s a lot.) you crawl over to the door of your nest, weakly pushing at it as you inch through, dragging yourself to the bathroom to try and fix the cuts and scrapes and bruises you got from the “strife” that Bro engaged you in (you hope its the only one you ever have to fight, because you’re cold and tired and shaking). 

Bro materializes in front of you and you can’t help but try to flinch away (your wings have started shaking in what you think is fear, but that started mixing with the cold long ago). His invisible stare is hard and you think there’s anger in it but it’s always hard to tell with Bro. You hear him sigh and then he leans down and pulls you up so that he’s carrying you. (you’re so fucking scared) He’s warm and his words are surprisingly soft when he says   
  


“Sorry, little dude, probably shouldn’t have gone that hard on you in your first strife, but you gotta be strong, ok kid?”   
  


You let out a pathetic noise and curl closer to his chest as he pulls you into the bathroom (he tries to set you down on the toilet but you don’t let go and he has to bring you with him as he grabs some bandages and alcohol). 

That is the first and only time he cleans you up after a strife (somehow you know that this is a one time thing-he’s only sorry because it’s your first strife). After that he actually gives you food (another thing you know is never going to happen again). 

Your name is Dave Strider and you are five years old. Today is the day that your class is old enough to fly for the first time. And you are terrified. You don’t show it, of course, that would be so uncool and Striders aren’t about that. So you stand at the back of the line as people run and jump off the end of the school-nest. The line is in order of wing-rank, and since you have wings about as low as you can go, you have to stand at the back. The wing system is set up with people with plain wings, only one color, at the top, and two colors at the bottom. Simple, right? Wrong. After that it’s divided up by which color/colors your wings have. Since you have black and red, and you don’t have any wind powers, you are at the very bottom. John Egbert, a kid in your class, has really pretty pure blue wings and his wind powers presented themselves last year. He’s really popular, and you almost resent him for it, but he’s also really nice (and kind of cute).

He’d been the first to run off of the edge and was now flying around and whooping with another few kids. It was getting closer and closer to your turn.

The line moved forward. Again. And one more time. And then you were the one standing at the very edge.

You took in a breath, stepped back a bit, and took off. You ran as fast as you could and straight off the side of the nest.

This was the part where you started flying.

Except you didn’t. Your wings wouldn’t open, they refused to. And you started falling. 

At that moment you were beyond sure you were going to die. You weren't worth keeping around, and no one would care if a kid at the bottom of the system died. No one was coming to save you. Your wings had opened, but them flapping was useless, and you knew you were smaller than other kids, but why wasn’t it working?

You can’t breath.

You still couldn’t breath when you felt someone catch you. You think you might have somehow started breathing negative amounts when you opened your eyes (when had those closed?) and saw John blinking at you, blue wings straining to keep both of you up.

“HEY! John, what ARE you doing? I’ve told you, someone of your status doesn’t need to interact with… *him*, why didn’t you just let him fall?” Mrs. Peters, your teacher, is frantically flying down, an almost furious look on her face, which you know is meant for you. God, if you don’t get killed right here, Bro is going to hand you your ass on a silver platter later. 

“Sorry Mrs. Peters, but I couldn't just let him die! That would be awful” John has a worried look on his face, like he would be held accountable for this. He won’t be. You will. Somehow, you think he might not know that.

Mrs. Peters pulls you from his grasp, and lets you drop. This time you force your wings to work, moving them like you’d seen others do time and time again. You’re still so small that it mostly just slows down your fall, and you have a hard time even staying in one place.

John is blinking at you, and then he pauses for a minute, waves his hand a bit, and you can feel the wind lifting you to his side. 

You’ve fallen two or three inches again by the time Mrs. Peters manages to wipe an outraged look off of her face, obvious disgust painting her features. John grabs your arm and helps pull you up normally. He keeps his hand there and you’re beyond grateful for the extra support, even though your wings are still beating as hard as they can to try and keep you aloft. 

Mrs. Peters is glaring at you. You can feel fear and anxiety circling in your gut.

“Dave, we need to have a...talk” she says it huffily and that's when you know that you are totally and completely screwed. John can’t do anything as she grabs you by your other arm and rips you free from his grasp, pulling you up quickly towards the nest. You can see the other kids stare at you for a minute, then you hear some of them laugh and start breaking out in whispers. The teacher’s grip is hard enough that it’s definitely going to bruise.

She ends up doing a lot of yelling, and when the bell rings for her to bring the other kids inside she just grabs the phone and calls Bro, sighing. 

That ends up being one of the worst strifes you’ve ever had, and once you’re thoroughly beaten bro lets you get cleaned up and go to your room like normal, but as soon as you shut the door, you can hear it click locked from the other side.

Your name is Dave Strider, you are 6 years old, and you don't understand why John Egbert won’t leave you alone. He hasn’t left you alone since school started again this year and he didn’t leave you alone for the last few weeks of school last year. It’s only going to end making more trouble for both of you, and no matter how many times you try to tell him, he still insists on partnering with you on projects, and following you around like one of the crows that have started to take a liking to you. You’re still smaller than the other kids, but you’re big enough now that you can fly a little ways, even if it leaves you exhausted. But now during recess you either have to stay on the balcony with the little kids or accept John’s help and be carried along by the wind more than by your wings. You’ve started doing that more, but you’re still really jealous of the other kids that have started doing complex tumbles through the air to show off to each other.

Today, John invited you to his nest after school. You are freaking out. Saying ‘no’ would be considered rude and ungrateful but saying ‘yes’ could land you in a heap of trouble. So, because you would rather be cowardly and save your punishment for later, rather than right now, you say yes. Well, you don’t say it, you more give a small nod and let him lead you towards his nest when school lets out. You don’t talk a lot, usually quiet answers to direct questions and nothing more. But John's good at filling in conversations on his own and is blathering on and on about something the whole time you sit waiting on the balcony. John gets picked up, like most of the other kids, so you have to wait for his dad to get here before you can go. Bro never picks you up, you just have to struggle home each day. John’s dad appears a few minutes later, in a really pretty, blue, skaia-corp flyer. He glances at you, then at John and asks in a whispered voice that you can’t quite hear about something (it's you, you know it is) Then, when John nods, he sighs and you hear the doors unlock. The door auto-opens and you blink in surprise. You glance at John but he just pushes you into the car, and then follows himself. 

“So, Dave, is it? Where do you live, kiddo?” John’s dad asks it politely and you respond in kind with a muttered address.

“Sorry, kid, couldn’t quite hear that, mind repeating that. So, you say, a little louder this time

“Top floor of Darryl Tree, in apartment 413” You know that it’s barely loud enough, but raising your voice much more than just enough to be heard hasn’t ever gotten you anywhere except a one-way ticket to pain-town. The rest of the ride is spent in mostly quiet except for John being asked about his day and then going on a long tangent for most of the trip. You like his voice. 

When the car parks outside of a beautiful, and very big nest, you feel a sense of wonder. It's so pretty, almost the whole top of a tree all to themselves? That doesn’t make sense to your brain, but you don’t ask any questions. You spend time in John’s room, playing on a console he has on the floor, that's approximately way way cooler than the old one that sits in the living room of your apartment. 

You get into a strife with Bro over where you were later, but he doesn’t really care, you know. You end up hanging out with John at his house a lot, and soon find out that he has an incredibly bad taste in movies. 

You’re seven when he asks to come to your nest. All you do is pause, then quietly, knowing that, really, you do want to have him over, even if it’s going to be a mess, you say yes. So, that day, John asks his dad, who has a worried look on his face as he says yes, then tells John to be home by 5:30 and to not get into any trouble. 

So you take off, flying as good as you can, which is made far easier by John helping you by changing the wind. You lead him to your apartment, unlock the door and pull him past the katanas and puppets, which he looks very creeped out by (as he should), to your room. Bro isn’t home, but he probably won’t be until late anyway. So you let John into your room, which is small, and crowded and not nearly as nice as his. 

You spend the time until 5:00 just talking and generally hanging out and then you agree to fly John home, since he doesn’t know this part of town. So you do, leading the way even though you know John could very easily outpace you. 

By the time you’re eight everyone seems to understand that you and John are a pair. They barely even try to separate him from “the bad influence,” which was you, of course. John tells you about a program called pesterchum, where you can talk to him over the summers. He introduces you to his other friends, two girls who live in a different city, who are named Rose and Jade. you quickly become good friends, but sometimes it gives you a shock because of the things they complain about. Rose has cool, pure purple wings, and Jade has Lime-colored wings. They all have more than enough and seeing the little things they complain about is such a mess that you sometimes just completely ignore them. It’s stupid things like  _ god my dad is baking more cakes  _ and  _ Mom got me a pony! How dare she!  _ and  _ gosh, grandpa is being so annoying! I’m not allowed to go on vacation this summer!  _ and it makes you so jealous that you hate them for it. Honestly, though, you’re pretty lucky that none of them ask what color your wings are. Until you’re not. Until they make you send them a picture (you got a picture from them too, and you knew it was only fair but… you were scared that they wouldn’t talk to you anymore). You send it, your wings visible only barely behind your back. They still notice. All you get from Rose is an “Oh, well, your wings sure are something…” like she wasn’t certain she still wanted to talk to you. That hurt. A lot. But you didn’t show it, just didn’t respond. Jade gave you a “I like your wings! :)” in what you think is pity (you're certain it is, actually). John just calls you a catfish and sends a picture of you he took that morning, but you didn’t expect anything else.

Overall it all goes over better than you expected and things go back to normal pretty quickly.

You’re ten when you’re allowed to see The Ceremony for the first time. You’re grouped in next to a girl named Stacy who has wings just two groups above yours, and then all the ten year olds, in wing-order, are settled into the main nest, a big building where every Ceremony is held. The ten-year-olds are the youngest there, and you can feel every eye on you as you’re all shuffled inside. 

The Ceremony is a big event where all the people that are 19 get a mate. The lower wings have to get one chosen for them, most of the time, and if there’s an uneven amount then the unlucky (definitely lucky) one returns the next year. The higher wings get to choose their own, which can include lower wings, but that almost never happens. But it did this time. A green-winged boy gave his flower (the same color as his wings) to a boy with white and orange wings. You knew dirk, he lived two apartments down from you, and even though he was 8 and a half years older than you, you had both always gotten along pretty well. When you saw them, your gut twisted up with something and you couldn’t help looking at John. Everyone else was staring at the pair on the stage with either surprise or disgust, except John (and you, you were staring at him) he had a look of curiosity and that made your heart flutter for reasons you don’t want to think about.

There’s another, smaller ceremony for the fifteen-year-olds and one for the thirteen-year-olds too. The one for fifteen is just a dance, but the one for thirteen is when you’ll all get your classpect. You already know that John is going to be an aspect of breath, but you have no idea what you are. You’re nervous though, that's for sure.

You’re eleven when the announcement comes on. 

_ Hello everybody, we urge you to stay in your homes and neighborhoods as much as possible. If you must leave make sure to stay away from the forest floor, Goblins were recently spotted near our homes!  _

It was said cheerfully and almost happily, but the panic it caused was immense. You hadn’t really had a reason to think about the war between Goblins and Humans. It had always just been the passing dread that you knew you would be drafted as soon as your Ceremony was over once you got to nineteen. You were a low wing. You wouldn’t have a choice. But now that passing dread was affecting your everyday life (it was before, you know why Bro makes you strife so much, but this is different). Now people buy up all the food at the grocery stores as soon as it gets on the shelf, and you go hungry even more than you did before. The first few times John offers you part of his lunch you refuse. Bro always taught you that accepting favors would kick you in ass, and you learned that the hard way. But of course you couldn’t keep it up forever, so eventually you caved after a particularly hungry weekend. You have to admit that you’d been staring at his food, but it looked so good and you were so. Fucking. Hungry. So when he asked if you wanted the apple he had, you just set your jaw tense for a moment, and bit your cheek, and took it from his hand. He looked almost surprised. You think that was the fastest you ever ate an apple.

You fall into a sort of pattern for a few months - wake up, dodge traps, meet John at the entrance of the school, head to your class-room, go to lunch, John insisting that you eat some of his food, only successful about 50% of the time, go back to class, fly back home, end up strifing with Bro and losing, talk to Rose and Jade on pesterchum draw a shitty comic, or listen to music or just surf the internet, and end up falling asleep at some point. It’s surprisingly normal for the fact that there’s a war going on. 

Of course that all goes to shit when you start middle school. In middle and high school the low and high wings are seperated for classes, higher wings taking classes on “leadership skills” and stuff, while you’re stuck with broken bathrooms, learning the best way to mop a floor. The difference is most obvious in the way you talk, John using more fancy language and you talking in the imprecise, messy way everyone at your end of the school does. You still all have lunch together, but everything else is seperated. You hate it. 

Your name is Dave Strider, you are thirteen, and you are standing on a stage that you’ve seen group after group of thirteen, fifteen, and nineteen year olds walk across, but you’re more nervous than you thought you ever could be. You’re on the opposite side of the line to John and that just magnifies it, because John looks excited and you suppose that’s because he has nothing to be scared of. You don’t either, really, but it’s still so nerve racking to be up on the stage. The Seer’s work their way onto the stage. You’ve been practicing what you say when they get to you for weeks, and you aren’t surprised to see John pull it off with only a little slip up on one word.

“I, John Egbert, wan-  _ wish  _ to know what my aspect, class, and future are.” He says it perfectly. One of the Seers smiles kindly at him and places her hands on his temples. She pulls away after a moment and says in a loud voice, turning to address the crowd,

“John Egbert, Heir of Breath, I present you to the world, with a future full of turmoil and misfortune on one path, and a life of comfort and happiness down the other,” She said it with certainty. John looked a little fearful for a moment, but he glanced at you and you gave him the most comforting look you could. The Seer moved down the row of kids one by one presenting them to the crowd. Everyone was wearing their best clothes, John’s was a light blue tunic that matched his wings beautifully. The girl next to you had on a yellow dress that complimented her yellow and orange wings. You had on a simple red tunic, that wasn’t embroidered and ornamented like John’s was, and a long sleeved black jacket left un-zipped over it. You knew it was kind of shabby, but it was this or borrowing one of Bro’s button-downs, and that wasn’t allowed anyway, you had to come in “traditional clothes” which just meant that you shoved on shitty replicas of old tunics in a color that matched your wings. The Seer was at your spot now. You took a deep breath, and said, surprisingly steadily,

“I, Dave Strider, wish to know what my aspect, class, and future are.” She plants her fingers on your temples, and you’re acutely aware that she could kill you and you wouldn’t be able to do shit about it. She brings her fingers back with a troubled look on her face.

“Dave Strider, Knight of Time, I present you to the world, with a future of uncertainty in both directions, and a past that you cannot change, so do not try to, hero of time, or you will doom us all” Her words made whispers break out in the crowd and anxiety burst to life in your stomach. Slowly the crowd moved on and the fifteens were next but you couldn’t focus on anything. You sat there through the nineteens too, unable to pay attention even as a teacher made a show of snapping in front of your face. It felt like you weren’t connected to the world, just looking at it, specifically at the corner of John’s wing, a soft round one so unlike the sharp skinny feathers that adorned yours. You weren’t sure if you were breathing but you were and you knew it at the same time. You were trapped in another dimension, just looking in at this one. When everyone got up to leave, you didn’t, and other than a few “hey! Dave! Get up here” ‘s they let you stay. John returned a few minutes later and pulled you up.

“Hey! Snap out of it! What she said doesn’t mean that you  _ are  _ going to doom us, you would never do that, so c’mon, all that means is that you can choose your own future! Dave? DAVE!” You were leaning against him. When did that happen? You couldn’t breath. 

“Dave?” his voice was quiet now. You were sinking to the floor and you couldn’t help it. He sunk with you. You felt tears dripping down your face. The miniature Bro in your head was telling you that crying is for sissies and wimps. You couldn’t stop. You felt John tilt your mouth open and then air was forced into your lungs, and out, and in, and out, in a perfect rhythm. You could feel yourself breathing kind of normally, but you’re clinging onto him and you can’t help it. You don’t know if you want to. NO! Bad thought. Don’t think that thought. You aren’t completely sure when you return to your body, but what you do know is that you’re exhausted. John’s got his arms wrapped around you and you can still feel air moving in and out of your lungs of its own accord. You don’t know why (you do, you just aren’t going to allow yourself hope about this) but you sink further into him. You squeeze your eyes shut further and let yourself cry into his chest with silent tears until you fall asleep. 

You spend the next year distancing yourself from John as much as possible. He doesn’t make it easy, but you block the girls on pesterchum and spend all the time that you aren’t in class at home. Everyone around you encourages it, and separates you two as much as possible, and they succeed. They give you both different lunch times, and that solves almost everything. Except for the fact that now you're alone. And you don’t have a way to get any food (you didn’t realize just how much you were relying on those little bits of his lunch until you didn’t have them anymore).

Your name is Dave Strider and you are fifteen, three weeks after the stupid dance that you had to do for your ceremony this year. You are scared. You’re scared because John is standing at your front door looking extremely pissed. In that moment you’re acutely aware that he could kill you and no one would blame him. You don’t know why he’s here but stay there staring for a moment before you realize that there are two people behind him, one girl with purple wings and another with lime green. You desperately want to shut the door in their faces, but Bro comes around the corner, raises his eyebrow and elbows you in the back as way of saying  _ don’t fuck this up, they could ruin us with one word.  _ So you don’t- you step back, opening the door a little farther with a muttered “c’mon in”. John still looks extremely pissed as you lead them back towards your crowded room, carefully stepping over the trip-line in the hallway and dismantling it before they catch up. You open the door to a messy room, decked out in red, with shitty, cheap turntables in one corner, your bed barely squeezing up against the other corner next to them. Shoved behind the door and the foot of the bed is your desk, stacked with papers and books and drawings. You have laundry shoved up on the chair and under the desk in place of an actual basket and the only real extra seating you have other than your chair and bed (where you spend most of your time) is a small shelf that you sometimes sit on. 

You shove your clothes off of your chair, and fly up to the shelf-seat next to the window, letting the others have the best seats as they squeeze into your room. You open your wings as far as the will in the little space and then gently flap them, shifting the air currents so that they blow the door closed almost silently other than a little ‘click’ as it closes. You don’t have a lock on your door, none of the low wings are allowed them, but you have a rigged up setting that basically locks it to everyone but Bro (he’s still way to good at this shit) but you don’t wanna freak them out by locking your door with a katana that you shouldn't be allowed to have (like you said, Bro is really good at bullshitting things, including inspections). 

“So, what’s up?” 

“WHAT’S UP!!! That’s all you’re going to say!!!! Dave, you didn’t talk to any of us for two fucking years, and you’re just going to say “whats up”!!! I honestly thought better of you!!” The girl with green wings says it, though you guess that it’s Jade. John just glares at you, so obviously angry it scares you more than you want them to know. You almost wish that you left your door open, being alone with three, very angry high-wings is not usually good for one's health. You hear one of your neighbors yell at you to “KEEP IT DOWN OR I  _ WILL  _ CALL THE POLICE” you just silently bring your fist over to the wall, giving the series of knocks that’s code for,  _ Shut the fuck up, there are high wings here  _ and it goes silent.

“Sorry about that, you can keep going if you want” you say it quietly, and you can see a flicker of worry cross John’s face before the pissed expression is back.

“Dave, we have all been worried about you, and-” Jade cuts into Rose’s speech with 

“And very, very pissed!”

“Yes, and that, but what i mean is that you haven’t spoken to us at all for a long time, and we came down for the summer to see John, and i decided to do some digging and figure out where you live, because we all really wanted to find you” She says it so calmly that more fear sparks inside you. There is no fucking way she’s not angry about this. They talk and talk and John says surprisingly little until he’s suddenly bursting out and yelling at you about everything. Jade joins in, and in a moment of being extremely annoyed at you she grabs your arm and says

“Are you even LISTENING!!!” 

Panic. It’s both the same and so, so fucking different to what you felt that day at the main nest. She’s trying to grab your shades, presumably to see if you were listening to her, so you veer away, backing yourself into the corner on the shelf, the window covering that you’d made out of an old blanket fell away. Your fingers found the lever to open it, and then moments later your crows came through the window. You had to keep them out whenever you weren't in your room or were sleeping because they’d mess up all your stuff, but as long as you were there they tended to be calm. Your crows did not take a liking to Jade having scared you, and two of them, the youngest ones, brushed up against you kindly, while a few of the older ones were starting to peck at Jade.

“WHAT THE HELL!! Dave!! GET THEM OFF OF ME!!” Jade screached. You knew you were screwed now. You couldn’t really breathe, but you lunged across the room, and dug into your desk, pulling out a bag of Doritos. You waved it in the air and cracked it open. They were going to be your food today. The crows obediently flew away and circled around you, several landing on your shoulders, another few pecking your hand until you stretched out an arm for the birds to perch on, and one, Old Case, the only one you’d named, landed on your head. He always landed there, and he was fiercely protective, so you’d named Old Case because he was an absolute nutcase. His beak was searching through your hair right now and he pulled out a few strands, flying off for a moment and adding them onto a nest that he had been making on your shelf-seat for a while, then flying back stealing a Dorito well he was at it.

“Jesus Christ Case, save some for the others” Rose started laughing after you said that, and then John was too and even though she still looked pissed off at you, Jade started laughing too. 

Your name is Dave Strider, and you think you might have good friends.


	2. Bring out the old guillotine We'll show 'em what we all mean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we see Karkat Vantas throughout moments of his childhood and life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Disenchanted by My Chemical Romance  
> ok so  
> this gets really messed up in some parts  
> im sorry  
> !!TW:GORE, CHARACTER DEATH, TORTURE, DEHUMANIZATION, FIGHTING, BLOOD, INJURY, SELF-HATRED, INTERNALIZED VICTIM BLAMING!!  
> once again, please let me know if i missed any  
> stay safe :)
> 
>   
> If anyone wants to do art for this, I would really appreciate some help (I'm going to probably ask my friends some point for help with art, but if anyone wants to help it would be really great) I just think this would be way better if it had art to go with it, and I really suck at digital art 
> 
> My Tumbler is: https://justadavekin.tumblr.com/  
> I'm abnormalBetrayal on pesterchum  
> My Insta: https://www.instagram.com/i.kin.dave.strider/
> 
> feel free to dm/talk/ask me anything (as long as it's appropriate, i am a minor!)

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are five years old when you realize that the world is a bit fucked up. You don’t really know why it took so long to get that through your head. You’d been surrounded by death and carnage and fear your whole life and this was no different. You were hiding in a cellar from the drones that were performing a sweep over the land, holding tightly onto the small stuffed crab that had been your only friend for as long as you could remember. You heard one of them get closer and you held your breath, staying as still as possible. Papa’s words flew around your head. Keep safe, kiddo, i wish i could keep you safe, but it’s too late now… just remember that the rebels will protect you. Try to find them, and when you do, tell them Commander Signless sent you. After that he’d tucked you away with a map, and ran off. That was two months ago. The map has brought you so so far from home and you think you might be close to where the rebels are, but you can’t really tell. As it turns out, you suck bulge at reading maps.

  
You pass months and months like that, hiding in basements and cellars and tree roots, hungry and digging up the sour wild onions that grew along the river that you were following on the map like you’d seen Papa do. In the end it was the rebels who found you.

  
You had the map tucked away in your pack, and you were about ready to move on from the area (you had been sure that you had it right this time) when the voice spoke from nowhere.

  
“Hey, kid, you lost or something?” It was nasally and high pitched, but also on-edge, like whoever it was was ready to fight if they had to. It was a tone you were so used to that it barely passed your mind as anything but ordinary. Needing to fight to live was so normal that he didn’t need to think twice to know that whoever it was would fight you, kid or not. And you would fight back.

  
“No, Commander Signless sent me,”

  
“Look, kid, I don’t know how you know that, but we haven't heard from Kankri in a long time, he didn’t send you,”

  
“Latula! We shouldn’t give out information like that!” They banter back and forth like that for a while, the new voice talking in a kind but ridiculously intimidating voice that’s surprisingly prim and proper.

  
“Uhh… hello! I’m still here!” You break in loudy before they can argue much more.

  
“Oh, right, yes, well, can we know your name, little one?” The proper voice filters out more clearly through the leaves than the other one, so you use that moment to pinpoint their location, the way Papa had shown you a few weeks before he had… you don’t wanna think about that.

  
“...uhm...Kar-kat” you split it up into two syllables in your head so that you don’t trip over your words like you do a lot when you're nervous or anxious. That’s a lot of the time, but it helps to split the words into their parts.

  
“Oh! See! I was right, he is Kankri’s kid!” The first voice says with a tone that says they didn’t really believe you were before.

  
Then, in a fluid motion two figures are sliding out of a tree, and over to you. You shift your stance just a bit, so that you could easily grab the small knife in your pocket and attack if you need to. You don’t like the knife, it’s sharp and pointy and it hurts people, and you don’t like hurting people, but you were taught a long time ago that hurting people was something you needed to do sometimes so that they didn’t hurt you. That was the way the world worked. That’s just how it is.

  
One of them has teal blood, shown off by her freckles, which sit across her face in a criss-crossing all-over-the-place not-quite-pattern. She’s wearing her hair pulled out of her face with a red bandana. She has on simple clothes, obviously made to fit in with the forest, made for stealth missions. The other one is a jade-blood, and her markings are really cool tattoo-looking flowers blooming around her face. She has her hair free around her, long and flowing, which seems counterproductive but she handles it well, unlike the other girl, who manages to get her hair stuck on a branch even though it's much shorter and tied back. You think that the one with long hair is definitely the one who sounds prim and proper. She has the same stealth-mission outfit, except hers is black instead of brown and grey, and hers seems to fit better.

  
Then she turns into a blur and you’ve been tucked under her arm like a wriggler.

“HEY! What are you doing!!” You demand it hoping for answers.

  
“If you’re Kankri’s kid then we have to keep you safe. We promised him that if you showed up we would.” She says it decisively, like that's the end of the conversation.  
It apparently is, because every time you ask what's going on and where you’re going she just repeats what she said. Eventually the other one, Latula, seems to get tired of it, because she pulls off her bandana and shoves it in your mouth to get you to shut up. You decide that you don’t like Latula much.

  
Eventually you get to where you were apparently going, a tree hidden in the dark canopy above that has large roots with rebel forces milling around quietly. You wouldn’t have noticed the place if you weren’t looking for it. Latula pulls the gag out of your mouth and the long-haired girl sets you on the ground.

  
“We found Commander Signless’ kid!” Latula shouts it loud and then everyone turns to stare at you. You scowl at them and open your mouth to tell them to mind their own fucking business, but before you can say that another voice is cutting telling the rebels to bring you to the nursery. You don't get why you have to go there, you’re seven, not three, but you follow them to a building carved into the underside of the tree anyways.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you’re nine years old when the rebels finally agree to let you and your friends train. You figure out surprisingly quickly how you work well with them, when the time calls for it. You and Terezi fight over stupid shit sometimes, and Sollux is an asshole a lot, and Kanaya acts like she’s your lusus, and you think that Nepeta has a serious flushed crush on you. But at the end of the day, all of you work well together when you need to. Sollux does well working with tech and using his psionics as a weapon. Terezi is good at just generally freaking people out enough that they don't want to fight (it helps that they underestimate her because she’s blind) and Nepeta will help her with that, mostly by tearing apart some poor animal that's nearby. Kanaya is so good with her chainsaw that it scares you. You, of course, lead them. Kind of. Sort of. Ok not really but you try. You do whatever needs to happen to make something come out in your favor, which funnily enough usually happens to be stealth.

  
Sollux always makes jokes about how he wishes you were always that quiet, and Terezi always joins him. You think that they’re just mean (you think they’re awesome and you wouldn’t trade them for the world).

  
“HEY! KK, it’s to your right!” Sollux’ yell reaches your ears just in time to roll away from the training bot that Mituna made for you to practice with. A crackle of magic follows you, having locked to your power signature. Your ears twitch as a loud CREAKEEEELLLL shatters the air around you and you can feel it nulling the silence hex you had cast on yourself. Nepeta is leaping through the air and you can feel her wild energy protect you from the next blast as she casts a shield around you with a ripple of her claws.  
“Karkitty! I have some herbs to help, here! You can feel the power of one of the leaves from a rose swirl into your head, and the familiar feel of your magic swirling in your chest grows to its normal strength as you pull yourself up, returning to help your team with the fight.

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you're ten years old when they send you on your first mission. Ten years old when Nepeta almost dies on that mission. It feels like your heart is wrenched out of your gut when you get found out. It was a stealth mission, just a quick in-get-the-info-out. The plan was simple; Sollux, Nepeta, and you go in, you and Nepeta do stealth, Sollux gets the info, you and Nepeta get him out. Easy, quick, simple, you’d been training for months for it, since it was your first mission.

  
You had the info, and you needed to get out. You and Nepeta were re-working the silence and invisibility hex so that it would last long enough to get out. The alarms went off. You froze for a moment, and then you grabbed Sollux and Nepeta by their shoulders and ran. You showered them in the mo

st basic spell you knew, and you ran. A magic-searching enchanted arrow hit Nepeta in the weak spot at the small of her back. Blood was pouring within moments.  
Sollux shot a series of psionics to throw off the arrows and they eagerly followed the arcs of blue and red magik. You were having a hard time breathing, but you kept running as fast as you could. You and Sollux were supporting Nepeta at this point, but you could see the exit. You could feel the simple invisibility spell wearing off as you ran, and you were probably shimmering into view, but you made it. As soon as you did, Terezi was there with Kanaya to pull you out, grabbing your shoulder with an almost painful grip while Kanaya crushed the pearl that teleported you to the base on the ground. Smoke clouded up from it, and then you were back among the roots of the main base.

  
Nepeta was bleeding, and you and Terezi and Kanaya were dousing her in as much of your magik as you could. Sollux shot a small bolt of red light up, almost catching a nearby bundle of leaves on fire. But it got the attention you needed and a medic ran over to help. You recognized her as Porrim, the same girl that you’d seen in the woods that day when they found you, but you couldn’t focus on anything other than the fact that your teammate, one of your best friends was bleeding out on the ground because you had been stupid enough to not take the extra moments you would have needed to hide the magic trails that the basic invisibility spell had caused.

  
It takes two weeks before Nepeta is allowed off bed-rest, and even then she can’t do anything strenuous. You spend your time melting into a puddle of self-hatred.

You’re twelve when you officially become a fighter team. The amount of times that you’ve fought battles is too many than anyone should ever have to fight, let alone a bunch of kids. But that’s just how it is, and you all know it. Signless never returned from that battle, the last one he left to. You know why. People still think you don’t. You always have.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are going to die. Your magic has fizzled to almost nothing, and you can’t feel it swirl around in your chest the way you used to. The ground of your cell is cold. Actually, everything is cold. Hunger feels like it's melted your bones and dried blood and dirt coat you everywhere. It smells like rot and urine. A dead body is laying a few feet away and you have an awful feeling it might be one of your friends. Nepeta maybe? She was the only one of your friends put in this holding cell, but you can’t really tell, because of all the other people in similar states of functioning. Your hearing is fuzzy and you’re barely conscious.

  
You really hope that isn’t Nepeta. Sollux and Kanaya managed to get away, and you know that Terezi almost certainly managed to strike some kind of deal with whoever was with her to get something out of it. You feel the fear start to eat away at you again when you hear a gruff voice calling out.

  
“Let the boss’s kid have a chance at the rebel, it can't hurt anything” The gruff voice of the guard calls it out, and more fear strikes through you. Harsh arms grab you, and you don’t have the energy to fight them anymore. You might just give up at this point. You don’t have any important information, but they don’t believe you, so the interrogations will probably continue until they kill you on accident. You hope that’s soon. You can’t take much more of this.

  
“This is the motherfucker that's causing you trouble? He’s a shrimp” a vaguely high sounding voice calls out. No, it’s not high-pitched, it's deep but it sounds like Nepeta did when she managed to get looped into doing some weed with Terezi and Sollux. The memory makes you want to belt out laughing, but your vocal cords are fried from all the screaming.

  
“He’s hard to break, good luck with shrimpy here”

  
“Oh, I don't need luck” His voice sounds dangerous and you don't like it. You’re used to the terror at this point, but a new tremor of it shakes you to your core when he says that. You’re handed off to him. His grip is too tight. You travel a long way, a different direction then the path to the room they put you in the other times. You have your eyes closed, unable to keep them open. The boy holding you is cold, and tall, and skinny. He’s cold enough that you can tell he has to be a highblood.

  
He brings you to a warm-ish room. At least it’s warmer than the cell, but your temperature sensing is just as fucked as your hearing right now. You think that he might be muttering something, too. You can’t really make it out. The ringing in your ears is from your own screaming. The pain is numbed out right now, but it always comes back. The boy sets you down on what you think is the floor. There's a bit of throbbing in your skull as he sets you down, and a quiet whimper that's more breath than sound falls from your mouth. You can’t help it. A moment later he pulls your head up carefully and sets it on a cushion. Confusion falls through you, but you don’t really question it. You can make out the door opening and closing.

  
A bit of time pases, but it falls into the same haze that everything before does. It’s a bit into this haze that you think you pass out some. A lot, actually. The throbbing everywhere you can think of brings you back anytime you manage to pass out. You like being passed out better than being awake, you think. It’s easier. Things don’t hurt. It doesn’t feel like that clawed whip is still embedded in your stomach. When you’re passed out, you can’t feel the truth of the fact that you’re only fourteen. You can’t feel the guilt of the fact that people younger than you have died for this cause and yet you’re complaining about a bit of pain. You are an awful fucking person, and you know it.

  
At some point, three pairs of footsteps echo down the hall outside the door. The ringing in your ears has started to die down in the quietness of the room. You hear the door open and a catching of breath and then someones pulling you into their grasp. You feel a small fire of fear and pain ignite inside of you and you go frozen still.

  
“Karkitty! Are you ok?” Nepeta. Ok, it was ok, Nepeta was ok. You force your eyes open, vision blurry. Terezi is standing nearby with a tall purple-blood that you’re guessing is the one who dragged you here. You don’t like that he’s here, but you can’t do shit except settle into your friend’s arms and hope everything works out. Nepeta pulls away a bit and you can see that she has a black eye and a split lip, but she looks to be doing way better than you.

  
The next few days are a mess. The purple-blood is named Gamzee. He’s… interesting. He doesn't interrogate you like you would expect. He doesn’t use traditional methods. Nepeta and Terezi are apparently being kept in a different cell, one for people who probably have less important information. You only get to see them that one time, but it’s good to know that they’re ok.

  
Gamzee is just odd at first. He treats you like you’re a pet, just a stupid animal to be orderd around. You hate it. But things get worse. Of course they do. He sets up a system. If you do what he wants, he gives you food or he lets you sleep on the soft, warm bed instead of the ground. If you don’t, he punishes you. It's scary how quickly you start to get used to it. Scary how little time it takes before you do whatever he asks you to. Time blurs into a weird sort of blur. Not the kind from when you were in the cells, but the kind of blur where you can recognize time passing, but you can't tell how one day is different from another. The same things happen every day. Wake up, Gamzee feeds you, has you curl up at his feet for a few hours, sometimes lets you curl up next to him on the couch, he’ll ask what you know, sometimes feed you, then you sleep.

  
Your mind twists up in weird ways and you know it. You don’t talk. You barely let yourself breathe in fear of messing something up. That doesn't mean you can’t yell at everything in your head though. You call Gamzee and everything in his godforsaken room a myriad of names, ranging from very creative to the classics. You can’t do much but feel your muscles fall apart and amuse yourself with hatred for everything.

  
You plan. You think. You wait. And you run.

  
You run while he’s sleeping, slip from the bed and start to saw away at the chain attached to the collar around your neck. The nail file that you managed to steal makes a scary loud noise against the metal of the chain, but Gamzee sleeps deeply and you’ve already weakened this link before anyways. It takes ten minutes before the chain falls away, but it does, and you’re thanking whatever deity might exist that Gamzee is so unobservant most of the time. You make your way over to the door and glance at the chewed up old nail file that Gamzee had used to file down your claws and fangs into blunt, useless things. You push it into the tiny gap and wiggle the thin, chewed up thing around until you hear a click. You run down the hall, avoiding guards as well as you can and knocking them out when you can’t.

  
You find the cells. You break them open, free everyone. You regroup with Terezi and Nepeta. It’s all a bit of a blur. You run, Nepeta’s magic combined with yours and a few of the captives to create a cloak for the fifty or so prisoners. It’s thin, but it works as you slip through hallways. You make your way out. You smell fresh air.

  
Your heart breaks in half.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you are exhausted. The past three months have been almost non-stop travel to get back to the main base. Along the way about two thirds of the prisoners traveling with you have split up, going to their own homes and families. The metal collar still sits heavily and tightly against your neck. It’s too close to your neck to safely take it off without the key. Even against some of the amazing lock-picking attempted by the rebels, it was locked on with magic, and you can’t undo the spell that easily. It chafes against your neck and you’ve had to shift your center of balance to get used to the weight of it. It cuts off your vocal cords effectively enough that even if you wanted to say anything, it gets cut off to a breathy whisper. It’s months of avoiding imperial drones and groups of Avian looking for anyone left alive. They don’t care to try and tell the difference between rebels and imperial forces. It’s months of traveling across battlefields and wastelands of the dead. So many faces of dead people stare at you, that it starts to be hard to tell the living from them. Avians and Goblins alike litter the ground and the tree limbs.

  
When you finally arrive at the main base, you find out that you turned fifteen while in that place. They manage to get some mages that are advanced enough to take off the collar, but it leaves behind a stinky magic residue that clings to your skin in an awful way. The way it pollutes your half-dead magic even more, even after you’re back home makes you want to punch something. You still have a hard time talking sometimes. It’s like the words don’t want to come out of your mouth. Like they get stuck behind an invisible wall in your throat. Sollux hugs you when you get back, and then promptly shouts at you to tell you to never do that again. Kanaya cries a little bit and doesn't stop hugging you for five minutes.

  
It’s scary soon when they start sending you on missions again. But it has to be done. You know that. You know that there isn't a way to just magically fix everything. You have to keep working, even if it hurts. Your Dad knew it. It still hurts.

You get assigned to stealth missions now. That’s your team's whole thing now, rather than just doing whatever needed done. Stealth is easier anyway. And simpler. It’s just hiding, get info, get out. You get sent to far away regions for it, but it's ok, because you have your team. You have Terezi and Sollux and Kanaya and Nepeta. Until you don’t.

It was cold, traveling was taking longer than it should because you’d had to go off track to avoid a swarm of drones. Sollux was hurt, a blast of magic had hit him in the arm, and he was travelling slowly. That was when they attacked. A group of imperial soldiers, armed to the teeth. They fell from the trees, from a net of spells that had hidden them as it fell away, the tainted, twisted, stolen spells. The spells that were stolen from low-bloods, probably from the few that you can see trapped up inside cages and collars and chains. Your magic still isn't fully returned. It’s there though, now, swirling around. But it’s not enough to fight off this many. They have you trapped, circling in around you. Your team acts without question. Nepeta, Sollux, and you, start to curl your magic together in defense, and Terezi and Kanaya have their weapons out to protect. But it isn’t fast enough. They strike, fast and sharp. Before you can blink there’s pain exploding in places and instinct is all that’s keeping you alive. You hear Sollux scream, and you make eye contact with Kanaya, a silent agreement. You run to him. You band together, your team circles around him, protecting him in his injured state.

  
Nepeta twirls through the air in a pirouette of fury and claws. Terezi swipes off anyone she can, enhanced senses allowing her to feel the vibrations of magic around her more clearly than you ever could. Kanaya is a bundle of noise, chainsaw loudly buzzing. Sollux is shoving his psionics into a bundle, ready to fight. It’s without question that you give him as much of your magic as you can possibly manage to spare. You cut down and block blows and twist weapons away from their owners with practiced skill, relying more on instinct than rational thought at this point, sickles slicing through the air. You get cut across the shoulders. Nepeta goes after the attacker.

  
She gets cut down. You screech, because that's Nepeta, one of your best friends. That’s Nepeta, the girl who was the first to welcome you into the group when you were kids. It’s Nepeta, who was crushing on you so hard that she didn’t hold it against you when she almost died on the first mission, but who accepted that you didn’t want to date her. It’s Nepeta. She was kind, and loving, and a better person than you ever could have been, or ever will get the chance to be.

  
Everything feels frozen, but like it's moving too quickly, and it all seems, for a few moments, like it’s all fake. Like that blood isn’t coming out of Nepeta’s neck, like this one will mend just as the last injury did, and the one before that. But it won’t. This one leaves her head barely connected to her body. It leaves it dangling out of reach and dripping olive green everywhere. You scream. You lunge forward, towards the highblood that killed her, and let your sickles fall around his neck. Someone is trying to slash at you while your weapons are busy, but you dodge. You let his head roll to the ground. And you fight. You take it out in yelling and in shouting and in blades cutting through flesh. And you hate it. You want to stop, to sit down, to mourn the loss of your friend and let your anger come out in moodiness. But you don’t have that choice right now. So you turn it all into rage, move on too quickly, slice through veins, and arms, and hearts, and anything that gets in your way.

  
When you’re done there are bodies piled around you, and you’re drenched in sweat and blood (some of it is yours, but so much of it isn’t that you look like a rainbow). The others are in similar states. Your eyes fall on Nepeta. You let yourself settle on the forest floor next to her. A moment later, you can hear the sound of water and Kanaya has settled next to you, washing the blood off of your face. You let her, and so does Terezi. Sollux leans against Kanaya, too tired and injured to properly kneel for the vigil, but unwilling to leave her body. Terezi gently wipes the blood from her neck and starts to gather flowers. You pick Sollux up and bathe in the river, as quickly as you can, but still thoroughly. When you come back Kanaya and Terezi are almost finished cleaning up too, and Nepeta has been mostly set out, a crown of flowers sitting around her head. You kneel next to her head, helping Sollux to sit as well, allowing him to rest against your side.

  
That night feels darker and more pressing, like the very essence of the world is trying to press you down. Nepeta’s usual bright singing can’t push away the fears that eat away at you. You can still feel her soul, the last of her magic. It’s faint, but it’s still tied to the world. Tomorrow you will need to find a spot to hold a releasing, to allow her soul to pass back into the world of swirling power and wild madness. That world always suited her more, anyway.

  
But for now, you sit by her in a clearing now cleaned of bodies except for hers, leaning on Kanaya’s shoulder with Sollux leaning on yours while Terezi whispers the spells that a mate would when their most loved partner twirls into the freedom and chaos that death offers to all who feel the rippling of the magic. You have the oddest feeling to tell Kanaya that you told her that those two were dating. You want to burst out laughing, all of a sudden, and you help the little laugh that turns into a choked sob on the way out.

The next morning, you finally all manage to gather the courage to pick up her body and gently carry her. You would bet that each one of you could pretty easily carry her small frame, but you all hold her together, a team even in death. Always. That was the promise. She told you that she would stick by you even if the others wouldn’t. So you’re going to repay that. You’re going to stick by her side, even when her soul is barely clinging onto the world.

  
You suppose that somewhere in the back of your head you always knew that your team couldn’t stay together forever. But it still feels wrong. It feels wrong to only have three other fully formed presences of magic swirling nearby yours. So you carry her to the river that you had passed a ways back. She had bloomed beautifully there, the wild magic in the area had spoken to that which she held in a mortal form. It will be where you release her soul, where she will grow into a part of the ground and the trees and the water and the sky. It takes a while to get there, but when you do, the beauty takes your breath away for a moment.

  
And then you see them. Bright wings attached to bodies, flying high above you. You can’t tell whether to run and hide (you were always taught that Avians would attack no matter what) or whether to stay and stare at the beauty of the wings flying high above you. You don’t get a choice, because before you can blink one of them is shouting something and pointing at you with wild eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: I'm gonna update this in a week and a half  
> me, three weeks later
> 
> yeah sorry this took a while, i would appreciate if you commented, it would be great to hear from you guys


	3. Hug All Ur Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Karkat is compared to a kitten at least four (4) times, there is an unreasonable amount of feels, and the plot finally starts happening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title -Hug All Ur Friends by Cavetown
> 
> !!TW:BLOOD, INJURIES, FIGHTING, MENTIONS OF DEATH!!  
> if i missed any, please tell me! otherwise, i think that's it, a lot of this chapter ends up being davekat fluff lmao
> 
> stay safe:)

Your name is Dave Strider, and it’s been two weeks since your friends forgave you for being an absolute asshole to them. You’ve been hanging out with them a lot, and it’s your turn to choose where to go today again. You choose to head to the forest floor, sneaking down the same route you always use when you do this. Jade seems nervous, and Rose seems a little apprehensive at first, but you used to do this with John every once in a while, so he isn’t as scared.

“But what if there are goblins! What if we get in trouble!” Jade says, as you glide across the treetops to the clearing a few miles out from your city. 

“Don’t worry, The clearing is always empty, I’ve never even seen evidence of anyone around” John says.

“Historically, this area of the forest is typically empty.” Rose feels the need to inform all of you. 

You fly down into the clearing early in the morning, feeling oddly excited for the day. You spend the time until lunch lounging around and talking, playing in the river and building a dam out of mud and rocks in one corner. A sense of peace settles around you that you haven’t felt in a long time. Years, maybe. Your wings get soaked in the water, but John’s there to blow dry them for all of you with blasts of wind. Your wings are still a bit small, but most of the time that's only a hindrance on long flights, and can come in handy for squeezing in and around things. You spend that afternoon playing tag in the air above the clearing, the trees being the boundary lines since you used them to your advantage at first. You get tagged by Rose, and are about to go right after John, purely because you feel the need to antagonize him. And then you see them. 

They’re on the ground, four of them. ‘goblins’ your mind supplies. Because it’s true. The fear that had been drilled into you reacts before you do. And you’re shouting at them, puffing your wings out to seem bigger than you are. The others are doing the same thing. The one in the front, who was...holding a body? What? Comes forward and before you have a chance to really think about it, you have your sword out. 

“Fuck do you think you’re doing?” It comes out more forceful than you intended, and it’s then that you notice that he has his hands raised in the air. 

“Us means harm not.” It comes out in a clicky clacky way, and matched with the broken english and scratchy voice he sounds like a shitty alien character in one of John’s b-list action movies. He’s shaking slightly, but against your better judgment, you can’t help but be a little confused. Where’s the bloodthirsty monster you were raised to fear? 

You let yourself breathe, reassess the situation. The body the four of them are carrying is still being held up, and you realize that they were probably holding some equivalent of a funeral. _oh_. You’re interrupting a funeral. 

Well now you feel like an asshole, thanks, brain.

You end up slowly drifting to the ground, sword still held tight in a defensive position. You feel John race to circle down next to you, like he’s scared you’re gonna get hurt if he doesn’t. Which is ridiculous, considering that the Goblins look more scared of you then you are of them. And the fact that you have a sword and aren’t scared of using it. Well, maybe you are. But they don’t know that. How much you hate the sound of metal scraping on metal.

Jade steps forward looking at the small body of the goblin that's held up between the four. 

“Is… are they… d- dead,” She’s shaking a little and it takes you a moment to remember that she wasn’t forced to become desensitized to all this bullshit where she’s from. Her and Rose’s city is far out from where the war is, but you’ve seen enough people crying over mangled bodies in wooden coffins, bodies that used to be their mates or children or siblings, that you barely even glanced at the body other than to make sure the person wasn’t a threat. Somewhere in the back of your mind yells at you, tells you that that’s fucked up. You’d have to agree.

“Us,,, are” He breaks off into a series of clicky, bug-like sounds, gesticulating wildly about, in probably the most non-threatening manner you’ve ever seen someone wildly gesticulate about. Dude looks like a kitten trying to sneeze. A moment later a girl with really sharp teeth (note to self, don’t trust those _anywhere_ near you, they look dangerous as all fuck) steps forward.

“We mean no harm, we simply came here to release our dear friend to the wild, as she would have wanted,” she says it slowly, like she has a hard time pronouncing some of it, but she’s still way better at it than the boy. You have no clue what releasing to the wild is, but you’d guess it’s like a funeral of some kind. 

“Oh. uhhh, we can, like, go, if you wanna do wha’ever that is? I think we can all agree it’d be an asshole move to interrupt a funeral, right guys? Yeah, cool, lets go, gonna blow this pop stand like we’re a buncha delinquents tryna ‘splode a jail cell or some shit. Wait that didn’t make sense. Whatever, my point is that we’re totally good on leaving now and you can do that shit you were wanting to do, yeah, yeah, cool, see ya guys later, well actually i hope we don't but anyway, we’re going now-” 

Crows. Of course, of course they choose that second to swarm around you, cawing and flapping. The boy’s mouth opens comically wide. Seriously, the dude looks like a kitten trying to yawn. You can’t decide whether to laugh or try and touch his hair. It looks really soft, ok? Case shoves his way onto your head like he always does, and the boy takes off running towards you with wide eyes. You shoot up into the sky on reflex, sword once again held tight in your hands. Case caws at you, pulling some of your hair up as a punishment for moving so much without warning him. The boy is yelling something in bug-language and then suddenly one of the crows caws a call and they’re circling around him as well.

“Great, nice to know my crows trust you, now can we-” a loud sound of movement grabs your attention. There are more goblins pouring out of the trees around the clearing. In a few moments the group of goblins that were there first have weapons out and- oh. Are… they fighting the other goblins? That confuses you. A lot. But, whatever, it’s not your business, and you need to get out of there before something bad happens, right? Yeah, that's definitely the best course of action right now. 

And then you hear Jade screech and all rational thought leaves your head, because she's falling to the ground harshly, one wing with most of the flight feathers brutally torn out. You torpedo towards her, sword held high. An arrow hits your wing but you can't be bothered to care right now. John has her caught with the wind and is flying around the weapons reaching for him as best he can. Rose has her knitting needles out and is stabbing all the goblins in sight. You slide your sword through the air, and as much as you hated strifing with your brother, you’re holding your own pretty goddamn well right now. You might have to thank him for that. Maybe you could get him a cake or something that says ‘thanks for kicking my ass every day for the past decade, now I know I can stay alive in an active warzone’. You think he would probably approve of that. 

At some point, you think you must win because a yell sounds out from who assume has to be the general, and most of the remaining goblins run out of the clearing in retreat. A rainbow of blood is spilled around you, and that makes you a little sick to the stomach. Blood has always freaked you out, but you’ve probably seen more of it then all of your classmates combined. 

You bring your attention back to Jade, who’s weakly clinging onto Rose’s shirt, and crying her eyes out. You feel unsteady on your feet, probably, you realize belatedly, because of the sheer amount of blood that's dripping from about a jillion wounds, and most notably, the arrow that’s still embedded in your wing. You pull off your shirt, tearing into stips to work as bandages. You hear a gentler clicky sound coming from nearby and glance at the goblins. The good ones, you mean. He’s shaking, and pretty obviously also hurt but from his bag he pulls out a bottle of something and inches forward until he sets it on the ground next to you. You grab it slowly. He stands back up with his hands raised up next to his head, backing away a bit. 

Giving it a sniff, you smell alcohol. Very useful for cleaning giant wounds, not very comfortable. And given the people you need to use it on, you’re going to get a giant fucking earful about that. Whatever. You gently tap Jade on the shoulder, pulling her wing out into a more stretched out position. You can tell that she’s going to be grounded for a few months before all the flight feathers grow back in, and Rose sucks in a breath that means she can also tell that. You share a look with them quickly, agreeing that you’ll stay with her until she heals. You aren’t going to ditch her, and you aren’t sure you can fly very well right now either. You can hear the goblins going about their own business in the background. You and Rose and John make a joint effort to move Jade over to the river with as little jostling of her wing as possible. John’s got a pretty big wound across one of his legs, and a ton of bruises and little cuts and scrapes too. Rose has the same, but she has a cut across her cheek and one on her arm instead of her leg. 

You wash off most of the blood in the slow-moving water, instructing Rose and John to do the same for their injuries. You can clean your own later, once you know your friends are ok. When you’re done with that you pour a little of the alcohol onto one of the pieces of your torn up shirt, and gently start cleaning out the worst of the wound Jade has. She cries a lot, but there isn’t much you can do to help. Once you're done with that, you let the other two clean up their wounds while you pick through Jades feathers gently, setting them straight and getting them clean, even though they’re still soaking wet from the river. Jade is cold, that much you can tell, probably a mix of blood loss and the freezing water you used to clean her wing. You didn’t really have much other choice, but you still feel for her. 

“We made a… fir” you glance back at the voice. The goblin boy is standing there, outlined by the warm light of a campfire. You think it’s kind of adorable how he says fire like fir, except the ending ‘r’ is rolled, so it sounds clicky and bug-like.

“I- Thank you.” You say it quietly, oddly scared of raising your voice right now. You pull yourself away from Jade’s side, Rose almost instantly taking your place to groom Jade's wings, letting it dry faster as well as probably making her feel better. 

You steady your wing for a moment, getting ready to pull out the arrow. Goddamn this is going to hurt. You feel warm hands gently stretch your wing out, and blink open your eyes to see John holding your wing steady. He looks a little sick, probably from the scary way the arrow is rooted in your feathers, but he tries for a reassuring smile, and you feel a bit of warmth curl around in your chest. You yank the arrow out. Blood is pouring but you quickly start washing it off. You grab one of the last bandages, the other having mostly gone to patching up the other’s wounds. You splash a bit of the alcohol down and clean it around the wound. It stings like all fuck, but you expected it too. 

Once that and your other, mostly smaller, wounds are cleaned up, you pull yourself up, leaning more weight than you want to admit on John. Rose clumsily picks up Jade, obviously off-balance because of the floppy weight of Jade’s still-damp wing. You bring yourself over to the fire, feeling warmer the closer you get. The goblins have set up a camp of sorts around half of it. The sun is starting to set over the horizon now. One of the goblins, the one with sharp red glasses and cane you swear you saw turn into a sword earlier returns to the group with a bunch of flowers and a… a dead squirrel? No, two dead squirrels. Damn. Certified nature expert over here, everyone. She tosses the squirrels towards the goblin with the whole red/blue shit going on. She places the flowers around the body that’s been carefully laid out just far enough away from the fire in a careful pattern. 

“So… obviously one of us needs to stay up and keep watch, right? That’s what they always do in the movies.” John says, puffing up his wings like he’s an action hero. 

“Well, yeah, me, now go to sleep, dimwit, you need it” You say it easily, flecking him on the ear like you and him are arguing over what to watch on a sleepover like you used to. 

“I am a viable option here as well, besides, Dave, you’re hurt almost as badly as Jade, and you fought way more, and, frankly, better than the rest of us. You need the sleep just as much as John and Jade,” Rose says, matter-of-factly, like that settles the matter. 

Case seems to think the middle of that argument the perfect time to come flying back out of the trees to land on your head. Another few crows from his murder join him in circling around you like your own personal bodyguard of beady eyes and scratchy talons. You laugh. You burst out into the kind of laugh that leaves you gasping for breath and falling onto your back and into the grass. God fuck hell you want to cry so badly right now. Case pulls out some of your hair and starts to caw at you loudly for disturbing him. Picky goddamn bastard. 

It takes you a few minutes to calm down the hysterics on your end, and John is looking at you like you’ve gone insane, while Rose seems to be picking apart your psyche on a golden platter. Case flaps around with his wings in your face for a moment before settling on your shoulder. The moon is outlining the goblins on the other side of the fire, and they’re all staring at the crows that have settled down around you. You raise an eyebrow. The crows seem content to roost in the trees around you for the night, though you don’t think you’ll ever understand why they’re so attached to you. 

After all of it, you agree to let Rose keep watch. The goblins evidently have a system for this because they don’t even do the chittery bug-language thing to decide that the dude who talked to you is going to be the one who stays up for watch. Another thing- you never want to see what goes into gutting squirrels again, if you can avoid it. That shit is a whole new level of disgusting. But they do share some of the meat with you when it's done, and you aren’t the type of person to turn down free food, even if it is a wild squirrel. Besides, it tastes surprisingly not awful. You let the crows pick the bones clean of left-over scraps you couldn’t get off of them. Case seems to appreciate the gesture.

Rose falls asleep as soon as John does. Jade had long ago fallen asleep, but that was understandable given the amount of blood she lost. Honestly, you weren’t particularly surprised. They weren’t taught to be constantly vigilant, to expect silent attacks in the dead of night. You envy them more than you want to admit. You take up watch for the night.

The goblin boy is still staring at you. You raise one eyebrow. He scowls at you, but you can see a slight blush on his face.  
  
“So, what’s your name? You do have a name right? I don’t really know Goblin. Is that what it's called? Whatever. My name is Dave,” He stares at you for a moment, and you think he might have not gotten any of that because he doesn’t say anything for a solid minute. 

“Krckit” he says pointing at himself. You think for a moment. You aren’t sure you can really make that sound, but you try your best.

“Your name is Karkat?” He scowls at you.

“Krckit!” He corrects you.

“Sorry bro, my mouth can’t make that sound, your name is Karkat now”

“MINE NAM IS KRCKIT” He shouts it, and you can’t help but wonder if the dudes legitimately part kitten with how much he looks like one right now. Heheh. Kar-cat. You’re so funny.

“Got it, Karkat” He looks like he’s going to have an aneurysm. This is the funniest shit you think you’ve ever seen. He fires off what you can only assume is a bunch of cusses in Bug. 

“So…. that’s Rose, Jade, and John” You say, pointing at each of them in turn.

“Dav, Ross, Jada, an, Jhonn” he repeats back.

“Damn dude, you’re going to butcher our names and still get on me when I can't speak Bug?” 

“Shush mouth! Tsrzi”-pointing at the girl with the awesome red glasses-”Kanarya”- the fang-girl-”Sollarx”-the double red/blue dude-”....Nepurrta” He closes off, pointing at the girl who’s lying on the ground dead.

“Ok, so I’m gonna do my best, Terezi, Kanaya, Sollux… Nepeta? I’m sorry if that’s wrong but I don’t know how to make those sounds,” He nods slightly, and you think that he gets the basics.

As the night wears on an oddly comfortable silence descends over the two of you. After about an hour Karkat gets up and gestures for you to follow him. You pause, glancing back at your friends. Leaving them alone is a bad idea, especially because there's no way they could beat any of the Goblins in a fight, especially injured. You hear Karkat sigh.

“Swear not hurt,” He says it quietly. You let a breathy laugh.

“Pinky promise?” He looks confused, so you step forward until you're a little within arms length and hold out your pinky. He just stares at it. You set the sword that was still held harshly in your hand under your arm and reach towards his hand. He pulls it back slightly. You grab it swiftly and pull it into the same pinky-out position. You wrap your pinky around his and shake on it. 

“Pinky promise.” He stares at his hand for a moment when you pull away before scrambling off a few feet. You feel slightly ridiculous just standing there.

“So… You wanted to show me something, right?” He blinks and then nods, slowly walking into the forest to the left. Most of your instincts are screaming about this being a shitty horror movie trap, but you follow him anyways. He doesn’t actually bring you very far from the makeshift camp, but you hear one of the crows caw at you like _get back here and go to sleep, silly human_. Karkat pauses to listen to it, eyes wide and reflecting the starlight. He sits down on a fallen tree and pats the part next him, inviting you to sit there. You collapse onto it, leaning back to relaxing back against the rock behind you. Your hurt wing aches and you carefully fold it out trying to make sure it doesn’t hit Karkat in the face. You fail at that, but you do manage to set your wing over your own self pretty quickly, ignoring the huff of annoyance and what you can only assume is more cursing.

“Sorry dude, ya know what they say about hurt wings. Actually you probably don’t. Shit i gotta explain the saying now don’t I? Gotta tell you what they say. Uuuuuuuuuuhh shit now forgot. Damn bro sorry. Fucking this up like a train conductor who forgot about the coal. This train really be going off the rails now. We’re fuckin’ falling now. A cliff just came out of goddamn nowhere and no we’re just freefalling through the air with the train trying to kill u-”

“SHUSH MOUHT!!!” Karkat slaps a hand over your mouth with a glare. You, of course, take the chance to lick it, after a muffled _shouldn’t’ve done that, bro_. He looks disgusted as he yanks his hand away quickly. You let out a breathy laugh. He starts pout-scowling, which is not a thought you would have guessed you’d ever think, and yet here you are, looking at someone who is definitely, pout-scowling. Karkat takes a deep breath after wiping his hand off on your shirt (ok that’s fair).

“You’ve nich win’s….The’re prtty.” His words are broken, you seem to have finally gotten an almost complex sentence out of him. You blink. 

“I...I guess, they aren’t really anything special...John’s are. Those are the wings I wish I had. That would make things so much easier.” you don’t even really know why you say it, why you tell someone who’s another fucking _species_ about the deep seated jealousy you have over your friends wings.

“Their is boring. Your is nich. Prtty”

“It’s pronounced nice. Not ‘niche’ it’s an ‘E’, not an ‘H-E’. And pretty. With ‘E’. Does Goblin not have the letter ‘E’? I haven’t heard you say it.” it’s not like you care, but you’d rather nitpick his english than think that your wings are anything but a curse. 

“É?” 

“It’s harder than that, a lot like how you’d say a hard ‘C’...actually, you know the part at the end? Say that sound, but not the first one,” 

“‘Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyy”

“E” 

“Eeeeeey?”

“E” 

“Eeeeeeeeeee” 

“Yeah that's it, ‘E’”

“Eee.” after that you fall into an awkward silence for a moment, until one of the crows sits down on Karkat’s thigh. Then he stills, staring at with wide eyes before gently, almost reverently, reaching down to slowly comb his fingers along the feathers on the crow’s head and back. The crow resettles his wings and then nudges into Karkat’s hand.

“Aw, he likes you” you say quietly. Karkat looks at you like you’re insane. He opens his mouth, but he doesn’t seem to know how to translate what he wants to say, so he just glares at you. Seriously, what is with this dude and glaring? It’s like he just constantly has a slightly pissed expression on his face. It changes into a look of concentration for a moment and he takes a deep breath. Then, slowly, he gestures at the bird and then at you.

“Yours. They like you. Special.” 

“Aw look, a complete sentence, coming from the Karkat insert generic last name here. Wait you’re a Goblin, so you might not even _have_ last names. Or if you do they’re probably weird. Like fuckin’ chitter-chit or some bullshit. Ooh yeah, i gotta write that one down. Good job Strider, thinking of them beats on the go.” You realize after your entire ramble that you never said anything about the crows. Goddamnit. Karkat is staring at you slightly mystified, permanent scowl firmly in place. The dude literally looks like a kitten. You know how many times your brain has said that already (four now), but damn. Add some fur to his face and you could mistake him for the cat that always yowled at you from the neighbors apartment. 

“Crows! Special! Vrrry good! SHUSH UP!!” 

“Forgetting your ‘E’s again, dude. And yeah, ok, crows are like God to you or something. Got it.” He, evidently, does not appreciate the reference. You’re wasting all your best jokes on him, and he doesn’t even understand them. 

He stares at you with disbelief for a moment before just rolling his eyes and getting to his feet, crow flapping off into the trees. 

“Hey, man, wait up, my guy” You get up a little too quickly and wince as your wing snaps out at an odd angle. He starts off closer to the group, picking up sticks and stray wood along the way. You follow suit whenever you manage to find one while stumbling around in the dark, following after him as close as you dare so that you don’t get lost. His eyes are still reflecting the light from above, but you realize while walking through the forest after him that a good chunk of the light coming from them is them glowing all on their own. The red pattern across his face is lit up just a little bit in the darkness as well, making his face appear more red than grey under the cover of the trees.

When you get back to the campfire everyone is still sleeping, but as you sit down after setting the few sticks you managed to gather in the pile that Karkat’s making next to the fire, John stirs in his sleep. His eyes crack open slightly.

“Dave? Is ‘at you? Where’d you go?”

“Got some more wood for the fire. Go back to sleep.” you push his shoulder lightly into the ground as he resettles his wings, one spreading out over him like a blanket. You think he mutters an _alright_ , and for a moment all you want to do is lean down and kiss him. You don’t, of course, but you want to more than you ever have before. So you make a little compromise with yourself and press a light kiss to his forehead a moment later, hoping to all the gods out there that he doesn’t remember it in the morning. When you glance at Karkat a moment later you something akin to loneliness in his gaze before he realizes you’re looking at him. Then he just glares at you.

The rest of the night is boring. Just sitting around and waiting. Halfway through the night you have to splash some of the stream water on your face to make sure you keep completely awake. Strider’s don’t slack. But, for the most part, other than another conversation with Karkat (‘dude, your eyes literally reflect light and everything’ ‘I am not kittttn!!!’) it’s just kinda sitting there waiting for dawn to break. When it does Karkat wakes everyone up with a yell.

“WAKES UPPPP!!! Daytimes!! No mor slepy!” Rose glares at you as she gets up, probably because she didn’t get to watch. You just shrug at her. Jade blinks open her eyes and groans, fingers finding her wing like she’s trying to confirm that it wasn’t just an awful dream. John winces at the cut on his thigh as he stands, glaring at Karkat and muttering about how sleep is needed to heal injuries properly. To your absolute delight, he doesn’t seem to remember last night. You silently thank whatever deity does or doesn’t exist for that absolute fucking miracle. You think that if he did you would literally just drown yourself in the river. God why did that sound like a teenage girl with a crush on some celebrity? Fuck. Whatever. 

You spend the morning with the Goblins, talking about plans, how everything is going to work. Because, for some reason, when you tell them that you doubt you and Jade are gonna be able to fly back up to the cities for at least a month, they insist that you come with them. Or rather, Karkat and Kanaya insist that, though you suspect that Kanaya’s part in that is because of the goo-goo eyes that she and Rose have been making at each other the whole morning long. Sollux insists that you aren’t going to have a good time if you stay here for more than the rest of the day, since the soldiers that got away will almost definitely have informed the empress. You also find out that these Goblins are part of a rebel group. Somehow that doesn’t surprise you as much as it should. 

A little before the sun gets to the middle of the sky, they hold a sort of funeral for Nepeta. They stand near her body, decked out with flowers and pretty rocks and with a layer of mist surrounding her, somehow. You think it has something to do with the way they’re all chanting something, mutters barely reaching your ears. You can’t understand the bug-language, but this sounds different, and if it weren’t a funeral, you think you might have bugged one of them until they told you what it was. At some point, the air around her starts to feel emptier, and Terezi sheds a tear as the whispers come to an end.

“There. She’s gone now. Where she would want to be.” Kanaya says it, and she is _so_ much better at speaking english than Karkat it’s almost funny. She still stumbles sometimes, but it’s much better, in general. You kind of like how Karkat has more of a purr-growl accent on his words, instead of the proper way of speaking that Kanaya has. You kind of like a lot of things about Karkat, actually.

**Author's Note:**

> feel free to yell at me in the comments if i take more than a week or two to write the next chapter


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